Israeli ex-president calls for peace with Syria

A former president of Israel, who presided over the peace deal with Egypt, urged the country's leaders yesterday to make peace with Syria in order to curb Iranian influence in the Middle East.

Mr Navon said that agreements could be arrived at despite the wars fought by Israel and her neighbours in the pastPhoto: CAROLYNNE WHEELER

By Carolynne Wheeler in Jerusalem

10:57PM BST 04 May 2008

As Israel prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary this week, Yitzhak Navon said the Yom Kippur war with Egypt in 1973 and subsequent peace treaty offered vital lessons for the government of Ehud Olmert. But he also said that the growing role of religion, rather than merely land and politics, made peace harder to achieve.

"The emergence of Iran as a very hostile factor changes the situation in the Middle East," he said.

Mr Navon said that negotiations could be held and agreements arrived at despite the wars fought by Israel and her neighbours in the past.

However, revolutionary Iran, whose leaders have forecast the destruction of Israel, was impossible to deal with. Mr Navon, 87, was Israel's fifth president, between 1978 and 1983.

In the early Seventies, he told sceptical Israeli leaders that a war with Egypt was coming, based on the rhetoric of Anwar Sadat, who was president.

"He told his people time and again he would make war, he would close the [Suez] canal, he would conquer the Sinai," he said.

"I said it is not propaganda. I said he will not be able to continue to lead his people if he does not carry this out." By the same token, he said, he believed peace would hold after the 1973 war when Mr Sadat began to speak about the benefits it would reap.

The 1978 Camp David accords culminated in 1980 in Mr Navon becoming the only Israeli president to pay an official visit to Egypt.

The same principles applied today, particularly with regard to Iran, he said.

"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [the Iranian president] speaks about wiping Israel from the map of the world," Mr Navon said. "He should be taken seriously."

He said Iran's Islamic fundamentalist outlook, which also inspired the terrorist groups Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon, had changed the region so much that "land for peace" deals could no longer solve disputes.

"With Hamas, it's not a matter of territory, compromise, withdrawal or not," Mr Navon said. "You [Israel] are not to exist."

But Syria, Israel's long-time foe, may be the exception. Bashar Assad, the Syrian president, recently acknowledged that "talks about peace talks" with Israel had begun. A deal with his regime could cut off the flow of money and weapons to Hizbollah in Lebanon and force the Hamas leaders in exile in Damascus to find a new refuge. These moves could limit the influence of their backers in Iran.

"Under Assad's conditions maybe there can be peace," Mr Navon said. "I don't know exactly what his conditions are. But it is important that we try to inquire." However, the former leader, who hunted Nazis in South America before becoming political secretary to David Ben Gurion, Israel's first president, dismissed fears that Iran was Israel's greatest threat since the Holocaust.

"There's no comparison," he said. "You wouldn't dream that, in 60 years, a population of a little bit more than 500,000 could become 6.5 million. You couldn't dream to have such achievements in the scientific field, in social issues, in theatre, in literature, in cinema."